MORTON GREETED ME with a conspiratorial smile, which was odd because we had just met. He was the C-level executive of a company, and I was just some dude who had recently left grad school who was looking for work. He asked a question that required imagination: “If I give you a Web page that 20 million people look at once a day, every day, what would you do with that page?” I said something totally crazy that I instantly regretted, but it was too late. The recruiter called later that day: you’re hired.

I met with Morton once a week to talk about the work ahead of us. It involved creating a suite of productivity apps for consumers, a starting page that would greet you each day—the one Morton asked about in the interview—and the chrome or user interface, that wraps around the browser’s rendering engine. Then I saw an email that went to the whole company; Morton was no longer with the company. This is probably not a good sign, I remember thinking. Later that day I ran into him as he was waiting for the elevator to exit the building. I said hi. He gave me that conspiratorial smile again and said, “Stefan, I’ve gotta to go now, but I know you all will figure it out.” As the elevator door was closing he said: “You’ve got this.” I appreciated that word of confidence from Morton. I never saw him again.

LIKE A TANK

About 15 of us who were going to create this new browser gathered in a windowless, Class A office space. Many more folding chairs than people. The fluorescent lights flickered as the head of product management (though that term was not in use commonly back then) showed us charts and stats. We learned about users, usage, and revenue. Then came an ominous slide: the main source of revenue was disappearing (isn’t it always?). We barely had time to consider the ramifications because the next slide showed us a new way to make money, and it involved a new partnership with a larger, more prosperous company. The partner had already signed a letter of intent, so “we are good” he said.

12 MONTHS TO FINISH

After walking through all the various apps, and capabilities of the new browser, the VP of product held up a hefty tome bound with a fat binder clip and said: “The requirements are all right here. All you have to do now is just write the code. You have 12 months to finish.”

He asked if there were questions. Some of the software engineers were a little skeptical that the applications described could be designed/developed in 12 months. “Who did you work with to create the estimate of 12 months?” asked a junior developer. I remember the head of product’s response: “We’re like a tank rolling towards victory. If you get in the way of victory, or if any of you get in the way, the tank will roll right over you.” This phrase came back to haunt me about a year later.

PRODUCTIVITY SUITE

I started to read the product requirements document. It said we will create a browser with an integrated Web-based productivity suite: an email client, a calendar, a stock portfolio, a starting page, a searchbox that generated leads for a search partner, etc. It continued for about 200 pages.

I can’t remember who it was, but someone said “Hey, check out this browser: it’s got a tabbed UI” and sent me a link. I installed it. This MIT grad student’s browser allowed you to create tabs. Each was a new Web page. We all instantly realized this was a huge productivity and performance improvement, and we started talking about doing the same thing.

The lead software engineer and I stood at a whiteboard. He drew a diagram of the browser’s architecture, boxes nested in boxes, and then we talked about this tabbed UI. He asked me questions like: “What if you open 100 tabs?” and “What happens when I close the last tab?” and similar. I remember sketching a set of tabs on the whiteboard, and then we came up with some good guesses for behaviors. Not too long later he pulled up a browser with tabs. We played with it, and tweaked a few behaviors. It worked.

The head of the user research team was not happy with the tabs. She argued that our subscribers were “everyday people, not techies. They just want to to check their email, maybe search for something. That’s it.” She said “Why do we want to complicate their lives with tons of extra tabs and applications they don’t want or need?” This planted a seed of doubt. Would “everyday people” be confused by tabs? I heard people say “tabs are too risky.”

Right about then we hired a design agency. It was a company founded by a guy who had designed several of Apple’s classic, early products. The group of us talked about the pros and cons of tabs in a browser, and a decision was made: we already had a functional prototype, the technoligical risk was low. We’d gather feedback from prospective users and adjust if needed. Tabs were in.

NEXT INSTALLMENT

I’ll share a stroy about what happened about a year later, when an ambulance pulled up to our building.

NB: Names and details have been changed.